Blog Post 5: Research into Existing TV Commercials for Take-Away Food Delivery Services

I researched this because I wanted to find out the conventions of food delivery adverts and what made each advert successful. I did this by making a playlist on YouTube and compiling a range of adverts to look at.

A screenshot of the Youtube Playlist, You can click here to access the playlist on Youtube

These two adverts had the most impact on my work:

Deliveroo; Eat More Amazing

• City setting
• Reminds me of the start of a TV show through the use of an establishing shot and long shots
• The unique part of the advert blends into these long shots seamlessly
• It is first subtly shown through the reflection, and then more focus is drawn to it
• Implies the blending of normal mundane life with a fun alternative
• Very Comical and exaggerated
• Shown through (presumably) the POV of a person which allows the viewer to assume that this could be something they could see themselves
• Cinematic like you would see in a TV show or film
• A range of shot types to make it interesting
• Match cut at the end to link the fictional story to the audience member
• Very chill and relaxed music - positive connotations of service
• End Card flicks through many restaurants, then ends up on Deliveroo logo with their slogan
• Use of their blue and white colour palette
• Slow and Chilled paced editing to fit daydream mood

Hungry House; Space

• Establishing shot at beginning of space station
• Introduces a problem connoted by the stomach growl
• Comical and slightly exaggerated acting to help convey the story whilst making it seem like a true possibility - realism
• An easy method is shown - 2 taps on the phone
• Almost instant response
• Positive representation of the service
• Sound design to show heroicness of the delivery
• Comedic stuff to make it fun and enjoyable
• Seemingly ‘Perfect’ and delicious food is shown on screen to highlight the end product
• Idealise service to make it seem more appealing
• Joy and happiness in astronaut’s eyes when eating food
• Logo at the end with a website to anchor the company into the viewer’s mind
• Links adverts to the same marketing campaign

This was beneficial to my project as it gave me a couple of ideas about what my adverts could be about while also finding out the many conventions that I should follow in my adverts such as an ending title card.

Blog Post 4: The Target Audience (Males and Females Aged 16-25)

According to our brief, our adverts had to target Males and Females aged 16-25. Researching into this demographic and finding their interests helped me create some initial ideas that could widely appeal to the audiences.

In 2005, Channel 4 created Crowd DNA in order to study how TV could satisfy every audience's needs. One aspect of the project focused on youth culture and offered a tribal breakdown based on what the people had in common (Music, Fashion, Sport etc.). This became a big part of the project and was soon named 'UK Tribes' with a brief to explore and extend the research of youth culture in an honest and realistic matter. Luckily, this age group was 16-25 matching our brief exactly. Here is what I found out:

There are 5 main tribes within the community:

• Tribe
• Attributes that make the tribe identifiable
• Thoughts on how that could influence my advert

• Mainstream
• The backbone of society. There are generally seen as the 'cool kids' and have a strong emphasis on conformity
• People such as Chavs, Sports Junkies, Fangirls and Blingers
• Listens to Itunes top 100 and EDM House party music
• Chav looks inspire 'Leading Edge' trends
• Emergency food for parties or certain situations, so a 24/7 service may be of use?

• Leading Edge
• Proactive people
• All about doing, creating, debating, performing etc.
• With the new use of technology, voicing original ideas is much easier
• We're a delivery service, so we need a lot of varied restaurants to accommodate all types of people, especially picky/fancy ones
• Uniqueness to brand to make it more appealing?

• Urban 
• Urban Tribes are strongly influenced by what they see and experience in their immediate environment
• Urbans are best known for music – from R'n'B, grime, UK bass and funky to old school jungle and rap
• Fashion-wise, streetwear rules – from classic sports brands to independent urban labels, such as Adidas. Drawing inspiration from US street fashion, these Tribes were among the first to adopt the baseball jacket and snapback combo – a look now adopted by Leading Edge Tribes aplenty.
• Lots of being independent and leading their own way in life, driven by what they enjoy, whether that be fashion, money or just relaxing
• Customizability
• Reliability
• Accessibility

• Aspirant
• Very modern teenage look, hoodies, jeans and headphones
• Trendies, vloggers, hipsters, Hypebeasts (wearing said brand)
• Love of music, festivals, fashion and football
• Slight boost with help from the internet; Youtube and Instagram playing a heavy role

• Alt
• Known as the Internet culture
• Gamers, Superfans, Alternative music lovers, geeks
• A massive tribe, becoming increasingly bigger
• Love using technology and the internet so that accessibility will be crucial

• Overall;
• Upbeat music is generally the most appealing to a wide variety of audiences
• Each group is looking for their own uniqueness of how to represent themselves to everyone else
• Lots of influence from the internet and technology
• This is still a general overview, a singular person will have their own hobbies and things they like
• Lots of focus on community and bringing people together

This research was incredibly vital as it helped me target the different groups of people within my target audience whilst being able to find aspects of the advert that are occurring throughout the groups. The research affected my choices about actors and clothing options as I wanted to help the viewers relate to the characters within the advert.

Blog Post 3: The ASA BCAP Code

I researched the ASA BCAP code so I could find out what I would not be allowed to show in my adverts. I did this by visiting the official ASA website and reading through their relevant guidelines finding what would be applicable to my adverts.


The main principles from the ASA I noted were that:

• The advert cannot cause distress or contain anything that is likely to cause physical or mental harm
• No loud or obnoxious sounds can be used
• Cannot encourage child obesity
• We are a food delivery service so I cannot imply any unhealthy habits
• Obvious exaggerations ("puffery") and claims that the average consumer who sees the advertisement is unlikely to take literally are allowed provided they do not materially mislead
• Must a very obvious exaggeration that the viewer could recognize
• Subjective claims must not mislead the audience; advertisements must not imply that expressions of opinion are objective claims
• Can't say promises without proof
• Advertisements that include a comparison with an identifiable competitor must not mislead, or be likely to mislead, consumers about either the advertised product or service or the competing product or service.
• There is a thin border when talking about competitors

The 3 chapters that were most relevant to my adverts. These can be found at
https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/advertising-codes/broadcast-code.html

This research helped my project as it helped me rule out ideas that were inappropriate and broke the ASA codes.  I was also able to read the code in greater detail than I already knew, for example, I cannot feature any video games that have certain age restrictions and I cannot involve alcohol in my advert, both aspects that impacted an advert.

Blog Post 2: Channel 4

Researching Channel 4 was a key part of my research as their company mottos and values are vital to understand in order for my advert to fit in the Channel and best use their outreach. Channel 4's website, their annual report and Wikipedia articles gave lots of information about scheduling, the TV shows that they air and other useful information.

A comparison of Channel 4 to other popular channels in the UK

Channel 4 is a public service television broadcaster launched in 1982 as a 4th accompanying channel to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. With 11 sister channels and 5.28% of all audience share, Channel 4 is an ever-growing broadcaster striving to reach more people than ever. 

Channel 4 has a list of aims to achieve each year, as part of the public statutory remit. It consists of 15 elements including:

• Encouraging innovation and experimentation
• Provide educational content
• Reflecting the cultural diversity in the UK
• Inspiring change in people's lives
• Supporting Young People

Channel 4's annual report demonstrated its growing ambition to support diversity throughout all the content aired, not only black, asain and minority ethnic (BAME) groups, but also a rising change in the perspective of the LGBT community.

With the rising popularity of on-demand TV, Channel 4 introduced All4, a way for the viewers to watch most programmes that have aired recently, whenever they wish to watch it. This proved to be a huge success; for example, "The End of the F**** World's full boxset was released on All4, 3.1 Million users watched the series within 100 days of the programme launching. 69% of these finished the whole series on the same day.

The Great British Bake off proved to be one of the most-watched programmes this year for Channel 4, receiving an overall audience share of 54.5% of 16 to 34 year olds. Other shows that this age demographic enjoy are Gogglebox, The Simpsons and Hollyoaks; these shows all air in the evening, from 6pm onwards. The Simpsons airs almost every day at 6pm, Gogglebox airs around 9pm and The Great British Bake Off airs from 8pm; I will place my adverts before, during and after each of these shows.

Overall this research taught me about the values of Channel 4, and how I should use them to help reach more of Channel 4's audience. Shows such as Bake off and Gogglebox have a demographic that suits the 16-25 age range we need to aim so I can put my advert around these shows to maximise my reach.

Blog Post 1: Existing Take-Away Food Delivery Services/ Industry

I researched food takeaway services in order to find the conventions of the services, and understand the industry. I did this by researching the different brands and looking at what made each company unique from the rest. Some companies that I researched into include: Deliveroo, Just Eat, One Delivery, Hungry House and Uber Eats. They can be separated into two different types of delivery service, aggregators, and new delivery. Aggregators work as middle-men, taking orders from customers and giving them to restaurants. The delivery, in this case, is the responsibility of a chosen restaurant. On the contrary, new-delivery services make the same thing, but they take full responsibility for the delivery process, building their own logistics for the best delivery. This is especially useful for those restaurants that don’t have their own drivers. This type of delivery service is becoming much more popular nowadays as it allows the customer to chose from a larger variety of restaurants giving them more choice on what food they want to eat.

A specific look at Just Eat and Deliveroo:
Just Eat is one of the leading companies in this industry, serving over 22.8 million customers around the world. One of their mission is to create the world's greatest food community, and they are already serving over 100 different types of cuisine from 87,000 restaurant partners internationally. Another aim for the company is to make food delivery an exciting experience for both the restaurant business as well as the customer. The use of their app is a great appeal for the younger generation (the main demographic) as phones are greatly intertwined into their lives and this convenience helps to create a stress-free experience. For the customer, Just Eat boasts a significant message throughout its work; choice. However, around the time of which we were doing research, there were many articles about Just Eat in the news as hygiene ratings in their app had been quite hidden and not very easy to obtain. It turns out they had many restaurants on their app that had a 0 hygiene rating which should have meant that they were shut down but Just Eat continued to provide service for them. This problem was mainly due to Just Eat's sign up system that lacked background checks on the restaurants. This allowed for some restaurants to provide food for Just Eat's customers when the restaurant should have closed down.

Deliveroo's app screenshots as seen on the Google Play Store

After being founded 12 years after Just Eat, Deliveroo is a growing competitor in the marketplace, having revenue growth of over 650% year after year. Deliveroo's aim differs from Just Eat's; Deliveroo desires to bring great food direct to customers as fast as possible, in less than 30 minutes. Restaurants who partner with them see their revenue increase by up to 30%, creating thousands of jobs in the restaurant sector. The secret behind Deliveroo's system that helps them compete with bigger companies is their ‘Frank’ algorithm. It is a predictive technology and evaluates the most efficient way of distributing orders based on the location of restaurants, riders and customers.

App and website design:

• Design of the app
• Minimalistic design, modern and attractive
• Spacious
• Bright and colourful to help connote the exciting experience
• A clear colour scheme to match the brand
• Higher end phone in all the shots, however, no phone brand is ever shown
• Actual app services:
• 3 Steps:
• Choose Food and Restaurant(s)
• Where to Deliver to
• How to Pay
• Other additional tabs include
• Offers Page
• Recommended
• Search for nearby restaurants
• Types of food tab and ratings tab
• Data and Cookies used to help the user find food that they may like

This research was extremely useful to my initial plans as they gave me ideas on what my adverts could focus on. Great food and the speed of the delivery seemed to be a very high priority for the other companies as these are the aspects of the service that reflects the company the most. The companies never talk about the prices of the food because as a delivery service, we do not have much control over the base price so this will be reflected in my advert.

Continuity Task 2 Evaluation

1. What was your role in the task and what did you actually do?
I helped film the scene, act in the scene in some shots and i also did some of the editing.

2. As a group, what factors did you take into account when planning(a), filming(b) and editing(c)?
     a)When planning, we created a storyboard that helped illustrate our ideas to the others. We planned our scene whilst in the setting we were filming in, so we were able to plan our shots accordingly, finding out which shots were best suited for the environment. Since we had a very tight time constraint, the script was made up very quickly, but was given a couple small fixes as we were filming
     b)When filming, our idea was to film the main part of the scene from 3 angles, a master shot and the 2 OTS shots, as well as film the extra shots such as the introductory shot and shots including the extra student who comes and asks the 2 main characters a question.
     c)Having filmed our scene from the 3 main angles, we had a lot of flexibility with editing as we had plenty of footage. Because of this, we were able to make the scene flow as smoothly as possible and have very tight edits.

3. How successful was your sequence? Did you fulfill the demands of the brief? Did you manage to demonstrate match-on-action, shot-reverse-shot, and 180-degree rule? Did you achieve continuity overall?(WWW/EBI)
I am very happy with the final sequence and I believe that we fulfilled the demands of the brief. We were able to successfully demonstrate the match-on-action in the beginning few shots, the shot-reverse-shot during the main conversation all whilst keeping within the 180 degree rule. Overall, we nearly achieved continuity; however, between shots 4 and 5, Kush (the actor on the left) turns his body from facing the table to facing Cathy (the actor on the right) and this jump disrupts the continuity of the sequence.

4. What have you learnt from completing this task? How might this learning impact on future video production work?
I have learnt to be attentive to all details within a sequence such as body language and even eye contact. This will help me in my future coursework as the extra attention to detail will give the whole sequence a much more professional look.

Bolt UK Disney Trailer Analysis

Bolt is a 2008 Disney film about a canine superstar named 'Bolt', a star of his own action adventure TV show. His days are filled with danger and intrigue, until one day, when he becomes lost and travels outside the set o the TV show. But Bolt doesn't know that he's on a TV show; he thinks his amazing powers are real. When Bolt is accidentally shipped from his Hollywood soundstage to the mean streets of New York, he begins his adventure: Armed only with his delusions and accompanied by a cat and a hamster, he sets out to to find his way home, and find his owner, Penny.

The trailer starts with the disney inter-title. This sets the audience expectation very high as Disney have a reputation to produce very well known and successful films such as The Incredibles and Snow White and the seven dwarves. The following shots help set-up the premise of the story. Things such as the transitions, a TV flicker between cuts, and the background narration help set up the premise of the core story. The non-diegetic sounds such as the music help increase the 'epic' nature of Bolt's actions, and this is a part of Disney's 4-part marketing plan. Kids are one of the main audiences for Disney, and these superhero-like actions help the film appeal to this audience. The next shots also show the 'behind the scenes' part of Bolt's TV show. This helps set up the story as well as appeal to the tech-savy side of Disney's audience.

The disruption is talked about in the narration, but is aldo clearly denoted in the shots soon after when Bolt sprints out of an office, his face panic stricken. The background voice also has a lot of panic and worry in it. This unease helps emphasise the crux of Bolt's problem helping to push the story forward. Furthermore this problem may be relatable for some audience members, so they may be more able to relate to the problem, therefore adding appeal for them. These shots are followed by the introduction of another character, the cat, and a comedic moment between them. The cat is an excellent representation of the opposites to Bolt, portrayed through physical being as well as through character and some hobbies(later discovered in the movie). The camera angles in this scene also help emphasise Bolts vulnerability, a low angle for the cat's shots to show her dominance, and high angle shots on Bolt, to connote the fact that the cat is looking down on him, in a sort of patronising manner. Bolt is also portrayed as a helpless kid in these shots forward which heavily contrast the more in control Bolt seen previously, and this helps excentuate one of Bolt's problems that contributes in the story.

The hamster seen in the beginning of the trailer is seen once again soon after the previous shots, and links the starting shots to the significance of the story.